September 25, 2025 • 19 mins
Dive into Omega The Last Days of the World, a captivating science fiction novel written by Camille Flammarion in 1894. Set in the 25th century, this thought-provoking tale explores the impending threat of a carbonic-oxide comet on a collision course with Earth. Through its narrative, the novel delves into the philosophical and political ramifications of humanity facing its potential end. (Summary by Wikipedia)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section thirteen of Omega The Last Days of the World.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Omega The Last Days of the
(00:22):
World by Camelle Flammarion, Part two, Chapter four. The last
habitable regions of the globe were two wide valleys near
the equator, the basins of dried up seas, valleys of
slight depth. For the general level was almost absolutely uniform.
(00:44):
No mountain, peaks, ravines, or wild gorges. Not a single
wooded valley or precipice was to be seen. The world
was one vast plain, from which rivers and seas had
gradually disappeared. But as the action of meteorological agents, rainfall
and streams had diminished in intensity. With the loss of water,
(01:08):
the last hollows of the sea bottom had not been
entirely filled up, and shallow valleys remained vestiges of the
former structure of the globe. In these a little ice
and moisture were left. But the circulation of water in
the atmosphere had ceased, and the rivers flowed in subterranean channels.
(01:31):
As in invisible veins. As the atmosphere contained no aqueous vapor,
the sky was always cloudless, and there was neither rain
nor snow. The sun less dazzling and less hot than
formerly shone with the yellowish splendor of a topaz. The
(01:52):
colour of the sky was sea green rather than blue.
The volume of the atmosphere had diminished considerable. Its oxygen
and nitrogen had become in part fixed in metallic combinations
as oxides and nitrides, and its carbonic acid had slowly
increased as vegetation deprived of water, became more and more rare,
(02:19):
and absorbed an ever decreasing amount of this gas. But
the mass of the earth, owing to the constant fall
of meteorites, bolides, and uranolites, had increased with time, so
that the atmosphere, though considerably less in volume, had retained
its density and exerted nearly the same pressure. Strangely enough,
(02:45):
the snow and ice had diminished as the Earth grew cold.
The cause of this low temperature was the absence of
water vapor from the atmosphere, which had decreased with the
superficial area of the sea as the water penetrated the
interior of the earth, and the general level became more uniform.
(03:06):
First the depth and then the area of seas had
been reduced. The invisible envelope ofervaqueous vapor had lost its
protecting power, and the day came when the return of
the heat received from the Sun was no longer prevented.
It was radiated into space as rapidly as it was received,
(03:30):
as if it fell upon a mirror, incapable of absorbing
its rays. Such was the condition of the Earth. The
last representatives of the human race had survived all these
physical transformations solely by virtue of its genius of invention
and power of adaptation. Its last efforts had been directed
(03:55):
toward extracting nutritious substances from the air, from subterranean water
and from plants, and replacing the vanished vapor of the
air by buildings and roofs of glass. It was necessary
at any cost to capture these solar rays and to
prevent their radiation into space. It was easy to store
(04:20):
up this heat in large quantities, for the Sun shone
unobscured by any cloud, and the day was long fifty
five hours. For a long time, the efforts of architects
had been solely directed towards this imprisonment of the sun's
rays and the prevention of their dispersion during the fifty
(04:42):
five hours of the night. They had succeeded in accomplishing
this by an ingenious arrangement of glass roofs superimposed one
upon the other, and by movable screens. All combustible material
had long long before being exhausted, and even the hydrogen
(05:03):
extracted from water was difficult to obtain. The mean temperature
in the open air during the daytime was not very low,
not falling below minus ten degrees. At this point, the
author provides the following extended footnote. Many readers will regard
(05:26):
this climate quite bearable, inasmuch as in our own day.
Regions may be cited whose mean temperature is much lower,
yet which are nevertheless habitable, as for example, berker yangsk
whose mean annual temperature is minus nineteen point three degrees.
(05:49):
But in these regions there is a summer during which
the ice melts, and if in January the temperature falls
to minus sixty degrees and even lower in July, they
enjoy a temperature of fifteen and twenty degrees above zero.
But at the stage which we have now reached in
(06:09):
the history of the world. This mean temperature of the
equatorial zone was constant, and it was impossible for ice
ever to molt again. End of footnote. Notwithstanding the changes
which the ages had wrought in vegetable life, no species
(06:30):
of plants could exist even in this equatorial zone. As
for the other latitudes, they had been totally uninhabitable for
thousands of years, in spite of every effort made to
live in them. In the latitudes of Paris, Nice Rome, Naples,
(06:50):
Algiers and Tunis, all protective atmospheric action had ceased, and
the oblique rays of the sun had proved insufficient to
warm the soil, which was frozen to a great depth
like a veritable block of ice. The world's population had
gradually diminished from ten milliards to nine, to eight, and
(07:16):
then to seven, one half the surface of the globe
being then habitable. As the habitable zone became more and
more restricted to the equator, the population had still further diminished,
as had also the mean length of human life, and
the day came when only a few hundred millions remained,
(07:41):
scattered in groups along the equator and maintaining life only
by the artifices of a laborious and scientific industry. Later,
still toward the end, only two groups of a few
hundred human beings were left occupying the last surviving centers
(08:02):
of industry. From all the rest of the globe, the
human race had slowly but inexorably disappeared, dried up, exhausted,
degenerated from century to century through the lack of an
assimilable atmosphere and sufficient food, Its last remnants seemed to
(08:25):
have lapsed back into barbarism, vegetating like the Esquimaux of
the north. These two ancient centers of civilization themselves yielding
to decay, had survived only at the cost of a
constant struggle between industrial genius and implacable nature. Even here
(08:47):
between the tropics and the equator, the two remaining groups
of human beings, which still contrived to exist in face
of a thousand hardships which yearly became more insupportable, did
so only by subsisting, so to speak, on what their
predecessors had left behind. These two ocean valleys, one of
(09:12):
which was near the bottom of what is now the
Pacific Ocean, the other to the south of the present
island of Ceylon had formerly been the sites of two
immense cities of glass, iron and glass, having been for
a long time the materials chiefly employed in building construction.
(09:33):
They resembled vast winter gardens without upper stories, with transparent
ceilings of immense height. Here were to be found the
last plants, except those cultivated in the subterranean galleries leading
to rivers flowing underground. Elsewhere, the surface of the earth
(09:56):
was a ruin, and even here only the last vestiga
of a vanished greatness were to be seen. In the
first of these ancient cities of glass, the sole survivors
were two old men, and the grandson of one of them, Omegar,
who had seen his mother and sisters die one after
(10:17):
the other of consumption, and who now wandered in despair
through these vast solitudes. Of these old men, one had
formerly been a philosopher and had consecrated his long life
to the study of the history of perishing humanity. The
other was a physician, who had, in vain sought to
(10:39):
save from consumption the last inhabitants of the world. Their
bodies seemed wasted by anemia rather than by age. They
were pale as specters with long white beards, and only
their moral energy sustained them yet an instant against the
decree of destiny. But they could not struggle longer against
(11:02):
this destiny, and one day Omegah found them stretched lifeless
side by side. From the dying hands of one felt
the last history ever written, the History of the Final
Transformations of humanity, written half a century before the second
(11:23):
had died in his laboratory while endeavoring to keep in
order the nourishment tubes automatically regulated by machinery propelled by
solar engines. The last servants, long before developed by education
from the Simian race, had succumbed many years before, as
(11:45):
had also the great majority of the animal species domesticated
for the service of humanity. Horses, dogs, reindeers, and certain
large birds used in aerial service, yet survived, but so
entirely changed that they bore no resemblance to their progenitors.
(12:08):
It was evident that the race was irrevocably doomed. Science
had disappeared with scientists, art with artists, and the survivors
lived only upon the past. The heart knew no more hope,
the spirit no ambition. The light was in the past.
(12:30):
The future was an eternal night, all was over. The
glories of days gone by had forever vanished. If in
preceding centuries some traveler wandering in these solitudes thought he
had rediscovered the sites of Paris, Rome, or the brilliant
(12:51):
capitals which had succeeded them, he was the victim of
his own imagination, for these sights had not existed for
millions of years, having been swept away by the waters
of the sea. Vague traditions had floated down through the
ages thanks to the printing press and the recorders of
(13:14):
the great events of history. But even these traditions were
uncertain and often false. For as to Paris, the annals
of history contained only some references to a maritime Paris,
of its existence as the capital of France for thousands
(13:34):
of years, there was no trace nor memory. The names
which to us seem immortal. Confucius, Plato, Mahammet, Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne,
and Napoleon had perished and were forgotten. Art had indeed
(13:55):
preserved noble memories, but these memories did not extend end
as far back as the infancy of humanity, and reached
only a few million years into the past. Omegar lingered
in an ancient gallery of pictures bequeathed by former centuries,
(14:16):
and contemplated the great cities which had disappeared. Only one
of these pictures related to what had once been Europe,
and was a view of Paris, consisting of a promontory
projecting into the sea, crowned by an astronomical temple and
gay with helicopterons circling above the lofty towers of its terraces.
(14:41):
Immense ships were plowing the sea. This classic Paris was
the Paris of the one hundred and seventieth century of
the Christian era, corresponding to the one hundred and fifty
seventh of the astronomical era, the Paris which existed immediately
prior to the final submergence of the land. Even its
(15:05):
name had changed, for words changed, like persons and things.
Near by. Other pictures portrayed the great but less ancient
cities which had risen in America, Australia, Asia, and afterwards
upon the continents which had emerged from the ocean. And
(15:27):
so this museum of the past recalled in succession the
passing pomps of humanity down to the end. The end
the hour had struck on the time piece of Destiny,
Omgar knew the life of the world henceforth was in
the past, that no future existed for it, and that
(15:51):
the present even was vanishing, like the dream of a moment.
The last air of the human race felt the overwhelming
sentiment of the vanity of things. Should he wait for
some inconceivable miracle to save him from his fate? Should
he bury his companions and share their tomb with them?
(16:13):
Should he endeavor to prolong for a few days, a
few weeks, a few years, even a solitary, useless and
despairing existence. All day long he wandered through the vast
and silent galleries, and at night abandoned himself to the
drowsiness which oppressed him. All about him was dark, the
(16:37):
darkness of the sepulcher. A sweet dream, however, stirred his
slumbering thought and surrounded his soul with a halo of
an angelic brightness. Sleep brought him the illusion of life.
He was no longer alone. A seductive image, which he
(16:58):
had seen more than one before, stood before him. Eyes
caressing as the light of heaven, deep as the infinite,
gazed upon him and attracted him. He was in a
garden filled with the perfume of flowers. Birds sang in
the nests amid the foliage, and in the distant landscape,
(17:21):
framed in plants and flowers were the vast ruins of
dead cities. Then he saw a lake on whose rippling
surface two swans glided, bearing a cradle from which a
new born child stretched toward them its arms. Never had
such a ray of light illuminated his soul. So deep
(17:45):
was his emotion that he suddenly awoke, opened his eyes,
and found confronting him only the somber reality than a
sadness more terrible even than any he had known, filled
his whole being. He could not find an instant of repose.
(18:05):
He rose, went to his couch and waited anxiously for
the morning. He remembered his dream, but he did not
believe in it. He felt vaguely that another human being
existed somewhere, but his degenerate race had lost in part
(18:26):
its psychic power. And perhaps also woman always exerts upon
man an attraction more powerful than that which man exerts
upon woman. When the day broke, when the last man
saw the ruins of his ancient city standing out upon
the sky of dawn. When he found himself alone with
(18:49):
the two last dead, he realized more than ever his
unavoidable destiny, and decided to terminate at once a life
so hopelessly miserable. Going into the laboratory, he sought a
bottle whose contents were well known to him, uncorked it,
(19:10):
and carried it to his lips to empty it at
a draft. But at the very moment the vial touched
his lips, he felt a hand upon his arm. He
turned suddenly, there was no one in the laboratory, and
in the gallery he found only the two dead end
(19:33):
of chapter four. Recording by Steve Chilvers, Norwich, England,
Section thirteen of Omega The Last Days of the World.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Omega The Last Days of the
(00:22):
World by Camelle Flammarion, Part two, Chapter four. The last
habitable regions of the globe were two wide valleys near
the equator, the basins of dried up seas, valleys of
slight depth. For the general level was almost absolutely uniform.
(00:44):
No mountain, peaks, ravines, or wild gorges. Not a single
wooded valley or precipice was to be seen. The world
was one vast plain, from which rivers and seas had
gradually disappeared. But as the action of meteorological agents, rainfall
and streams had diminished in intensity. With the loss of water,
(01:08):
the last hollows of the sea bottom had not been
entirely filled up, and shallow valleys remained vestiges of the
former structure of the globe. In these a little ice
and moisture were left. But the circulation of water in
the atmosphere had ceased, and the rivers flowed in subterranean channels.
(01:31):
As in invisible veins. As the atmosphere contained no aqueous vapor,
the sky was always cloudless, and there was neither rain
nor snow. The sun less dazzling and less hot than
formerly shone with the yellowish splendor of a topaz. The
(01:52):
colour of the sky was sea green rather than blue.
The volume of the atmosphere had diminished considerable. Its oxygen
and nitrogen had become in part fixed in metallic combinations
as oxides and nitrides, and its carbonic acid had slowly
increased as vegetation deprived of water, became more and more rare,
(02:19):
and absorbed an ever decreasing amount of this gas. But
the mass of the earth, owing to the constant fall
of meteorites, bolides, and uranolites, had increased with time, so
that the atmosphere, though considerably less in volume, had retained
its density and exerted nearly the same pressure. Strangely enough,
(02:45):
the snow and ice had diminished as the Earth grew cold.
The cause of this low temperature was the absence of
water vapor from the atmosphere, which had decreased with the
superficial area of the sea as the water penetrated the
interior of the earth, and the general level became more uniform.
(03:06):
First the depth and then the area of seas had
been reduced. The invisible envelope ofervaqueous vapor had lost its
protecting power, and the day came when the return of
the heat received from the Sun was no longer prevented.
It was radiated into space as rapidly as it was received,
(03:30):
as if it fell upon a mirror, incapable of absorbing
its rays. Such was the condition of the Earth. The
last representatives of the human race had survived all these
physical transformations solely by virtue of its genius of invention
and power of adaptation. Its last efforts had been directed
(03:55):
toward extracting nutritious substances from the air, from subterranean water
and from plants, and replacing the vanished vapor of the
air by buildings and roofs of glass. It was necessary
at any cost to capture these solar rays and to
prevent their radiation into space. It was easy to store
(04:20):
up this heat in large quantities, for the Sun shone
unobscured by any cloud, and the day was long fifty
five hours. For a long time, the efforts of architects
had been solely directed towards this imprisonment of the sun's
rays and the prevention of their dispersion during the fifty
(04:42):
five hours of the night. They had succeeded in accomplishing
this by an ingenious arrangement of glass roofs superimposed one
upon the other, and by movable screens. All combustible material
had long long before being exhausted, and even the hydrogen
(05:03):
extracted from water was difficult to obtain. The mean temperature
in the open air during the daytime was not very low,
not falling below minus ten degrees. At this point, the
author provides the following extended footnote. Many readers will regard
(05:26):
this climate quite bearable, inasmuch as in our own day.
Regions may be cited whose mean temperature is much lower,
yet which are nevertheless habitable, as for example, berker yangsk
whose mean annual temperature is minus nineteen point three degrees.
(05:49):
But in these regions there is a summer during which
the ice melts, and if in January the temperature falls
to minus sixty degrees and even lower in July, they
enjoy a temperature of fifteen and twenty degrees above zero.
But at the stage which we have now reached in
(06:09):
the history of the world. This mean temperature of the
equatorial zone was constant, and it was impossible for ice
ever to molt again. End of footnote. Notwithstanding the changes
which the ages had wrought in vegetable life, no species
(06:30):
of plants could exist even in this equatorial zone. As
for the other latitudes, they had been totally uninhabitable for
thousands of years, in spite of every effort made to
live in them. In the latitudes of Paris, Nice Rome, Naples,
(06:50):
Algiers and Tunis, all protective atmospheric action had ceased, and
the oblique rays of the sun had proved insufficient to
warm the soil, which was frozen to a great depth
like a veritable block of ice. The world's population had
gradually diminished from ten milliards to nine, to eight, and
(07:16):
then to seven, one half the surface of the globe
being then habitable. As the habitable zone became more and
more restricted to the equator, the population had still further diminished,
as had also the mean length of human life, and
the day came when only a few hundred millions remained,
(07:41):
scattered in groups along the equator and maintaining life only
by the artifices of a laborious and scientific industry. Later,
still toward the end, only two groups of a few
hundred human beings were left occupying the last surviving centers
(08:02):
of industry. From all the rest of the globe, the
human race had slowly but inexorably disappeared, dried up, exhausted,
degenerated from century to century through the lack of an
assimilable atmosphere and sufficient food, Its last remnants seemed to
(08:25):
have lapsed back into barbarism, vegetating like the Esquimaux of
the north. These two ancient centers of civilization themselves yielding
to decay, had survived only at the cost of a
constant struggle between industrial genius and implacable nature. Even here
(08:47):
between the tropics and the equator, the two remaining groups
of human beings, which still contrived to exist in face
of a thousand hardships which yearly became more insupportable, did
so only by subsisting, so to speak, on what their
predecessors had left behind. These two ocean valleys, one of
(09:12):
which was near the bottom of what is now the
Pacific Ocean, the other to the south of the present
island of Ceylon had formerly been the sites of two
immense cities of glass, iron and glass, having been for
a long time the materials chiefly employed in building construction.
(09:33):
They resembled vast winter gardens without upper stories, with transparent
ceilings of immense height. Here were to be found the
last plants, except those cultivated in the subterranean galleries leading
to rivers flowing underground. Elsewhere, the surface of the earth
(09:56):
was a ruin, and even here only the last vestiga
of a vanished greatness were to be seen. In the
first of these ancient cities of glass, the sole survivors
were two old men, and the grandson of one of them, Omegar,
who had seen his mother and sisters die one after
(10:17):
the other of consumption, and who now wandered in despair
through these vast solitudes. Of these old men, one had
formerly been a philosopher and had consecrated his long life
to the study of the history of perishing humanity. The
other was a physician, who had, in vain sought to
(10:39):
save from consumption the last inhabitants of the world. Their
bodies seemed wasted by anemia rather than by age. They
were pale as specters with long white beards, and only
their moral energy sustained them yet an instant against the
decree of destiny. But they could not struggle longer against
(11:02):
this destiny, and one day Omegah found them stretched lifeless
side by side. From the dying hands of one felt
the last history ever written, the History of the Final
Transformations of humanity, written half a century before the second
(11:23):
had died in his laboratory while endeavoring to keep in
order the nourishment tubes automatically regulated by machinery propelled by
solar engines. The last servants, long before developed by education
from the Simian race, had succumbed many years before, as
(11:45):
had also the great majority of the animal species domesticated
for the service of humanity. Horses, dogs, reindeers, and certain
large birds used in aerial service, yet survived, but so
entirely changed that they bore no resemblance to their progenitors.
(12:08):
It was evident that the race was irrevocably doomed. Science
had disappeared with scientists, art with artists, and the survivors
lived only upon the past. The heart knew no more hope,
the spirit no ambition. The light was in the past.
(12:30):
The future was an eternal night, all was over. The
glories of days gone by had forever vanished. If in
preceding centuries some traveler wandering in these solitudes thought he
had rediscovered the sites of Paris, Rome, or the brilliant
(12:51):
capitals which had succeeded them, he was the victim of
his own imagination, for these sights had not existed for
millions of years, having been swept away by the waters
of the sea. Vague traditions had floated down through the
ages thanks to the printing press and the recorders of
(13:14):
the great events of history. But even these traditions were
uncertain and often false. For as to Paris, the annals
of history contained only some references to a maritime Paris,
of its existence as the capital of France for thousands
(13:34):
of years, there was no trace nor memory. The names
which to us seem immortal. Confucius, Plato, Mahammet, Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne,
and Napoleon had perished and were forgotten. Art had indeed
(13:55):
preserved noble memories, but these memories did not extend end
as far back as the infancy of humanity, and reached
only a few million years into the past. Omegar lingered
in an ancient gallery of pictures bequeathed by former centuries,
(14:16):
and contemplated the great cities which had disappeared. Only one
of these pictures related to what had once been Europe,
and was a view of Paris, consisting of a promontory
projecting into the sea, crowned by an astronomical temple and
gay with helicopterons circling above the lofty towers of its terraces.
(14:41):
Immense ships were plowing the sea. This classic Paris was
the Paris of the one hundred and seventieth century of
the Christian era, corresponding to the one hundred and fifty
seventh of the astronomical era, the Paris which existed immediately
prior to the final submergence of the land. Even its
(15:05):
name had changed, for words changed, like persons and things.
Near by. Other pictures portrayed the great but less ancient
cities which had risen in America, Australia, Asia, and afterwards
upon the continents which had emerged from the ocean. And
(15:27):
so this museum of the past recalled in succession the
passing pomps of humanity down to the end. The end
the hour had struck on the time piece of Destiny,
Omgar knew the life of the world henceforth was in
the past, that no future existed for it, and that
(15:51):
the present even was vanishing, like the dream of a moment.
The last air of the human race felt the overwhelming
sentiment of the vanity of things. Should he wait for
some inconceivable miracle to save him from his fate? Should
he bury his companions and share their tomb with them?
(16:13):
Should he endeavor to prolong for a few days, a
few weeks, a few years, even a solitary, useless and
despairing existence. All day long he wandered through the vast
and silent galleries, and at night abandoned himself to the
drowsiness which oppressed him. All about him was dark, the
(16:37):
darkness of the sepulcher. A sweet dream, however, stirred his
slumbering thought and surrounded his soul with a halo of
an angelic brightness. Sleep brought him the illusion of life.
He was no longer alone. A seductive image, which he
(16:58):
had seen more than one before, stood before him. Eyes
caressing as the light of heaven, deep as the infinite,
gazed upon him and attracted him. He was in a
garden filled with the perfume of flowers. Birds sang in
the nests amid the foliage, and in the distant landscape,
(17:21):
framed in plants and flowers were the vast ruins of
dead cities. Then he saw a lake on whose rippling
surface two swans glided, bearing a cradle from which a
new born child stretched toward them its arms. Never had
such a ray of light illuminated his soul. So deep
(17:45):
was his emotion that he suddenly awoke, opened his eyes,
and found confronting him only the somber reality than a
sadness more terrible even than any he had known, filled
his whole being. He could not find an instant of repose.
(18:05):
He rose, went to his couch and waited anxiously for
the morning. He remembered his dream, but he did not
believe in it. He felt vaguely that another human being
existed somewhere, but his degenerate race had lost in part
(18:26):
its psychic power. And perhaps also woman always exerts upon
man an attraction more powerful than that which man exerts
upon woman. When the day broke, when the last man
saw the ruins of his ancient city standing out upon
the sky of dawn. When he found himself alone with
(18:49):
the two last dead, he realized more than ever his
unavoidable destiny, and decided to terminate at once a life
so hopelessly miserable. Going into the laboratory, he sought a
bottle whose contents were well known to him, uncorked it,
(19:10):
and carried it to his lips to empty it at
a draft. But at the very moment the vial touched
his lips, he felt a hand upon his arm. He
turned suddenly, there was no one in the laboratory, and
in the gallery he found only the two dead end
(19:33):
of chapter four. Recording by Steve Chilvers, Norwich, England,
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